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Hello,
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at Iowa State University. My interests span the field of material science and engineering; however, in recent years my focus has been on defects in semiconductors and nano-structures. Recently I have begun to study the properties of ferroelectric crystals and films.

I use theoretical methods in my research, in particular I have specialized in quantum mechanical, first principle techniques. The computational cost of these calculations is large, so the challenge (and the fun) of this research is to extract the macroscopic properties of real materials from quantum mechanical calculations that are performed on systems containing only 100s of atoms. Although my work is theoretical, I try to connect to experimental work as frequently as possible. Building strong collaborations with experimental workers is also a priority.

On this website I briefly discuss some of the research projects that I have been involved with, as well as providing a list of my publications. The Projects page has a variety of mini-projects that I have worked on and some of the notes and handouts from lectures I've given.

Scott Beckman
--Winter 2008